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Honest Ed’s recalls a time when shopping was fun: Hume

“Don’t just stand there, buy something.” That’s what the sign at Honest Ed’s always advised, but now that the local landmark itself is up for sale, the words take on new meaning.

After a 65-year run at the corner of Bloor and Bathurst, Honest Ed Mirvish’s illuminated discount palace faces an uncertain future.

But with its glory days well over, a dollar store on every corner and the onslaught of big-box retail, Honest Ed’s has been living on borrowed time for years. The most valuable part of the operation is the land on which it sits, which, even by Toronto standards, would be right up there. In the battle for location, location, location, this property has all three. Subway across the street, a streetcar stop on the same corner and the centre of the universe just down the road, the site has mixed-use condo development written all over it.

“I expect we’ll be running the store for several more years,” said Ed’s son, developer and theatrical impresario David Mirvish, who controls the family empire. “I have so many memories — good memories — of the place. I grew up there. But now I’m taking all my family’s heritage and our legacy and moving it downtown. My downtown project is a 10-year project.”

David Mirvish has commissioned Toronto-born superstar architect Frank Gehry to design a three-towered complex on the north side of King east of John St. Though initial designs have been completed, the project has yet to receive city approval.

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But that doesn’t mean Honest Ed’s will go gently into that good blight. Architecturally, the store’s most obvious feature is the sheer candle power of its exterior lighting, something that should never be underestimated. Indeed, this is the last local example of those fabulous flickering façades that once illuminated downtowns around the world and still do in Asia.

When Honest Ed’s opened in 1948, the suburbs were barely a twinkle in the development industry’s eye. Downtown was where Torontonians went to shop. Eaton’s and Simpsons were at Queen and Yonge, Woolworth’s was at Carlton, Ed had Bloor and Bathurst. Though the subway didn’t exist back then, the store was at the crossroad of two streetcar routes.

It was nothing if not urban. Today, of course, retailers have to relearn the way downtown. Having spent decades in a wasteland of subdivisions, malls and parking lots, their premises have been reduced to little more than unadorned warehouses manned by invisible staff.

By contrast, Honest Ed had character, lots and lots of character. He used flashing lights to grab customers on the street and kept them laughing inside with an endless succession of specials and jokes on hand-lettered posters.

“Honest Ed’s a nut!” one said. “But look at the cashew save!”

“Honest Ed’s childish,” reads another, “his prices never grow up.”

The grim spaces of the 21st-century department store — the Home Depots, the Costcos and Walmarts — are Malthusian descendants of Honest Ed’s cheerful cheesiness. By the time they appeared, it was clear that Mirvish’s sense of humanity — not to mention humour — were about to be replaced by the just-in-time mentality of contemporary retailing.

Honest Ed’s intention was to stand out, to make people pay attention. A natural-born showman and instinctive city-builder, he accomplished this effortlessly. His store doesn’t just bear his name; it is an extension of who he was. In a corporate world run according to memos from head-office, the personality Mirvish brought to his store gave it life even when the goods on sale were ordinary.

In our race to the bottom, Honest Ed’s has always stood out as a place people love because he made shopping fun. It’s been a long time since any other retailer has made that claim.

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